The dramatic life of the modern Russian writer.

Alexander Pushkin (1799–1837) was the founder of the modern Russian literary tradition and the first to fully develop Russian as an expressive literary language. Passionately and irrepressibly creative, he lived under the constraints of imperial censorship and repeatedly clashed with the Tsarist regime. This biography traces the dramatic events of Pushkin’s life while revealing the personal and psychological forces that shaped his work, from the wounds of childhood and his evolving political sympathies to his intense emotional life and uncompromising sense of honor. Drawing on the latest scholarship, Gillespie challenges the sanitized, official ‘Pushkin myth’ in Russian culture and offers a more complex portrait of the poet. At its heart is the story of a writer whose pursuit of inner freedom transformed Russian literature and continues to resonate today.